IN OPTING for legislation rather than a voluntary code in order to fulfil its "right to roam" election pledge, the Government may have pleased many more ramblers than landowners, but it could become bogged down in lots of bother before greater access to the countryside can be delivered.

To begin with, its proposals are on a slow path to the statute book - possibly the other side of a general election - affording the landowner-led countryside lobby ample time to put obstacles in their way and, perhaps, even to haul ministers to the European Court of Human Rights afterwards.

For before giving people a legal right to ramble over some four million acres of land, the Government has first to specify which these are. And in setting up local access forums to reach agreements that will then become enshrined in the new law, it is writing a recipe for numerous prolonged collisions - followed by lengthy appeals - between landowners, ramblers, councils and environmentalists over which land should be open to walkers.

And with the hackles of the country dwellers already up - inspired by the now-lost parliamentary bid to ban fox-hunting - over perceived intrusions on their way of life, the Government's rejection of voluntary agreements with landowners is virtually certain to trigger their resistance all through the drawing up of the map of where there will be a right to roam, all the more so as they are being refused compensation.

Tony Blair's sop of the appointment of a former president of the Country Landowners' Association as head of the Countryside Agency that will police the right to roam is hardly likely to appease them, even though suspicious ramblers see this as a move that sides with the landed classes.

Certainly, it will encourage Pendle MP Gordon Prentice to tread on Downing Street's toes and march on - possibly with a rebellion being triggered on Labour's back benches - with his Private Member's Bill that would take a much more direct path to roaming freely.

But whoever's approach prevails, the signpost points first to plenty more controversy.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.